When the Golden State Warriors hired Mark Jackson to coach the team back in June 2011, the move was met with raised eyebrows in some corners and outright doubt in others.

Jackson had never been a head coach, never even been an assistant, and made it clear he wouldn’t be going that route. His credentials were wrapped up in his 17-year playing career, and his fallback option—calling games as an analyst for ABC—wasn’t all that bad.

He had interviewed with a handful of teams, including the Phoenix Suns, Chicago Bulls, Atlanta Hawks and New York Knicks, but the answer kept coming back the same: no coaching experience, no thanks.

A year and a half later, and look at Jackson now. He has the Warriors off to their best start in 21 years, with a 15-8 record. That’s fifth in the Western Conference, just 3 1/2 games behind the top seed, the Oklahoma City Thunder, and 1 1/2 games behind the Los Angeles Clippers in the Pacific Division.

It would seem the perfect time for Jackson to give a loud “Told you so!” to all those who doubted his credentials and his background, and in a phone conversation Friday, he was invited to do so.

He declined.

“Never bought into it,” Jackson told Sporting News about the criticism around his hiring. “So it wasn’t a concern of mine. We would have never found out anything more about me if I was an assistant coach. I was fine if I had stayed doing TV and never was a head coach if I had to go that route. I would have been absolutely fine. I’m just thankful and grateful that the Warriors ownership group and this management group took a chance on me.

“I truly am honored and privileged to have this platform. It is an all-time great group that buys in. I get nothing out of that. I don’t try to accomplish anything because of what someone else said. God has put me in position, and my faith is in God and not in man. I don’t get any satisfaction out of proving anyone wrong.”

Jackson has, throughout the season, deflected credit for the Warriors’ start to his players, and there is no doubt that this year’s version of the team has far more talent on hand than what Jackson worked with last year, when Golden State finished 23-43.

The Warriors have been without big man Andrew Bogut for all but four games as he recovers from ankle surgery, but they have a healthy Stephen Curry on hand, as well as two key veteran bench additions, Jarrett Jack and Carl Landry. Veteran forward David Lee, too, has been healthy and is making an All-Star bid with averages of 19.2 points and 11.5 rebounds.

In comparing last year to this year, Jackson said, “I humbly submit that we’ve got better players.”

Jackson is being a bit too humble. His is not an easy job, but he is doing it particularly well. Seven players on the Warriors roster are rookies or second-year players. With Bogut injured, he has had to start rookie Festus Ezeli at center, and even before the season began, he had the gumption to name rookie Harrison Barnes his starter at small forward, ahead of veterans Richard Jefferson and Brandon Rush. His starting shooting guard, Klay Thompson, is in his second year. Rookie Draymond Green is shooting 27.5 percent off the bench, yet Jackson had him on the floor at the end of Wednesday's win over the Miami Heat, because Green had done such a good defensive job against LeBron James—and Green happened to make the winning layup on a laser pass from Jack with 0.9 seconds left to play.

“It’s not an ideal world to have a lot of young guys when you’re trying to win,” Jackson said. “But I will say this—it’s ideal when you have the young guys we have. We’ve got young guys that are really old guys, with their mentality, with their makeup. They’re pros, they work their tails off, they’re students of the game. They love the game of basketball. So they make it easier. They’re not going to make the normal rookie mistakes.”

What Jackson sees with this version of the Warriors is something he recognizes from the successful teams he played for over the course of his career—a sense of accountability, of players not wanting to let their teammates down.

“The commitment, I believe, is there,” Jackson said. “I would say that this team is tied to each other—any great team I have ever been on, any good team I have been on, we had great camaraderie, we were a team. It makes it tougher to let go of the rope. It makes it easier to share the basketball and help defensively, support one another. … We’ve got a group that is enjoying each other and having a blast, and you get the results. I don’t know if we had 15 guys with one agenda last year, and that’s the difference.”

There is, however, a sizable elephant in the Warriors locker room: history. If Bay Area fans are a little slow to buy into this team, then it is with good reason. The club has made the playoffs once in the last 19 years, a record of futility that is hard to avoid. Here's a little more history: This Warriors team is set to finish a road trip of seven games or more with a positive record for the first time since 1970-71. Jackson has urged his team to shrug off the reality of Golden State's history, to let someone else’s past belong to someone else.

“With all due respect to the history of the Warriors, we acknowledge it, we’re thankful for the teams that came before us, but it’s not our history,” Jackson said. “Our history is, we were a bad team last year and right now we’re a good team. So that’s our history. I was somewhere else. My history, I didn’t make the playoffs but a few times as a player, that is my history. I can’t have both, the Warriors history and my history. I think ultimately the guys are looking at it like we’re making our own history here.”

If Jackson and the Warriors can keep making history, he will have proved a large segment of observers wrong. Just don’t expect to hear him gloating about it.